Just Who Is The Biggest?

As usual I leave the match reports to others, I sat at home Sunday night thinking about the game I saw and reflected in a different way.

Peter Kenyon is intent on making Chelsea the biggest club in football, something that was very achievable at United. But what makes a team BIG? If it is trophies then you would point to LIVERPOOL as they have won the most league titles and Euro Cups then any other English club. Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa have won the European Cup so that would make them a big club, yet their form in the last decade or more says that they haven't been consistent enough to be classed big in Europe.

So do we look at fan base? well Chelsea are far from that with their small ground, especially if you look at United, Barcelona, Milan, Madrid etc etc and all of those have a much bigger fan base world wide, even Liverpool have a huge following round the world.

Wealth, well that is one area that Chelsea can be considered one of the largest, their owner if one of the richest men in the world, although I am led to believe the Sheik ready to buy Liverpool would suddenly give them far greater wealth than their Blue London rivals. Also there is a difference in having the wealth but being successful in making a profit would be Manchester United, not only successful on the pitch but off it too with all their marketing skills.

So then what about current form. Manchester Utd are 8 points in front of Chelsea and therefore the best in England right now, even though Chelsea are PL champions. But does that make united the best team in England right now or do we wait until the end of the season to reserve judgement?

Now look at it from a fan across the world. Ask someone to name a big team in France, alot of people will say PSG, yet what have then won in the last few years, infact Lyon are probably the bigger and better team now and PSG find themselves 15th in the league and a massive 29pts behind league leaders Lyon after just 17 games! AJAX have always been the team in Holland yet they find themselves 3rd and 8pts behind PSV. In Germany Bayern Munich are the country's biggest club financially and in every aspect of the game, yet they are 4th right now. In Italy is has always been between Inter and Milan, yet Milan are currently 15th in the league on 13pts, they had a 7pt deduction so in real terms would give them 21 pts but even with that installed it would only give then 5th and STILL 18pts behind Inter. Lazio who could probably be compared to Chelsea over the years and now 5th and are 18pts behind league leaders.

What make it interesting is that the pattern in football is very easy to follow, the big clubs may have a few off seasons and need time to change things around, I think football changes far quicker today then it did 10 or 20 years ago and that is because of that amount of money in football today. You only have to look at clubs like Aston Villa and Pompey to see what can happen with money injection.

Chelsea may struggle upfront to find the perfect partner for Drogba, many say that Sheva was not Mourinho's signing and it shows how the manager makes a point of subbing him each game around the 70th minute mark, infact he is the most subbed player in the Prem league, but Chelsea`s answer will be to ship him out at a loss in Jan and just spend another £30 million on another striker, probably David Villa if you believe the rumour mongrels, but is this right?

If we take the value of Chelsea's strike force Sunday against the cost of our defence, years ago you would shudder at the thought of such a striker force and how many goals you were going to leak, but nowadays that is not the case, price tags don't seem to matter as much in our inflated world of football.

If Uefa gets their way with the new rules on salaries and transfer allowances, then to go out and buy a new striker will be harder for the likes of the super rich, I am not sure that is fair and find that restraint of business... if the club has a big enough bank roller then what difference does it make to anyone else? Does it make it easy for them?

my answer would be no, just because you can buy the most expensive players in the world does not guarantee you success as Chelsea are finding out this season, everything in football is like the circle of life, Chelsea may be champions now, but the Bigger clubs will rise back up again and Chelsea will struggle in mid table minority with over paid superstars once the special one gets tired of his employers interference in transfers dealing.

we do BY, but where am i fighting ? it is a topic that i thought could bring discussion, but obviously spurs fans don't have the intelect or the experience of knowing what its like to be a big club to bring any arguement to the table ;)